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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (177479)	12/22/2005 5:07:34 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Orcastraiter; Re: "As you note, the steel frame building in Spain was fully engulfed in fire for 26 hours, and did not suffer a total free fall collapse. If anything this should make us ask the question as to why an entire building collapses with spot fires that only burned for a few hours." In both circumstances, the fires burned until there was nothing left to burn. That means that, all other things being equal, the amount of heat released was roughly comparable. So the Spanish building survived because it had time to get rid of the heat from the fire. Let me try and explain this by using nuclear weapons as an example. Plutonium is radioactive and will decay, releasing heat, on its own. But the natural rate of release is slow and so it doesn't even melt the metal that the bomb is made up of. But plutonium bombs are warm to the touch. The design of a plutonium bomb is to arrange (more or less) for the heat of decay to be released all at once instead of slowly over many many years. When all that heat is released at once, not only is the result hot enough to melt the metal that the bomb is made of, but it is enough to make an effective bomb. If that example wasn't good enough for you, then you might want to consider chemical explosives such as plastic explosives. It's well known that one can start a fire with plastic explosives and that they burn slowly. Doing this doesn't melt your metal coffee cup. But when these same explosives release their chemical energy quickly, the result is devastating. The difference is in how fast the heat is released. The simple rule is that the faster the heat is released (i.e. the faster the fire), the more damage. In the case of that small WTC building, multiple fires were started on multiple floors. That caused the building to burn quickly. Since the heat of combustion was released quickly, the building fell down. In the Spanish case, the fire was started at a single point and then slowly worked its way up through the building. Since the heat of combustion was released slowly, the building was able to survive. Got it? Just as general advice, by continuing to pursue insane theories about the WTC attacks you're not gaining any votes from the key swing voters. The public may not be fond of Bush's mistakes, but do you really think that the public is going to trust a bunch of people who believe in ridiculous conspiracies? These claims that no airliner was involved in the Pentagon fire are incredible. It's almost like these were fed to you by the Republicans to make you look like an idiot. -- Carl